discovering any lines that offend against the following fimple rules: The verse shall confift of 15 fyllables, and shall be divided into hemiftichs of 8 and 7. An accent fhall invariably fall on the 14th, and no expreffed accent, grave, acute, or circumflex, fhall fall upon any odd fyllables, faving the rft and 9th, in which the aberration is permitted, excepting in the cafe of monyfyllables, and acute accents, thrown by an enclitic upon a circumflexed word, which may occupy any of the odd places except the laft. This metre is not connected, as fome have imagined, with the catalectic iambic, which has not that divifion, and feldom that cadence; but it is an accentual form of the trochaic, quantity being difregarded. Many fuch verfes will be found amongst the trochaics of Ariftophanes and the tragedians. For instance, Eira θυμαίνειν ἔφασκε· δεινὰ γὰρ πεπονθέναι. Nephel. It is difficult to al certain exactly, how and when quantity was first banished; these sixos TOXITING are of the 11th century. Not long after, Tzetzes wrote verses exactly fimilar; but although they are accented like our poetry, and clearly derive their whole harmony from those accents, he, the fame Tzetzes, wrote also strict iambic verfe; and though there is no reason, nor fhadow of reason, for fuppofing that he pronounced each individual word differently in the different metres, he expreffes his fenfe of the fuperior excellence of those, in which temporal rules were obferved. By this it appears indifputably, that the Greek words were then pronounced according to their accents; that fuch pronunciation did not, to a Greek ear, deftroy the harmonious cadence of temporal verfe; and that the fame combination of accents did produce the fame metrical effect in that language that it does in ours; and certainly they deserved the fame confideration from a compofer of mufic.

But if it be further afferted, that fuch accents were folely expreffive of mufical notes, and were not regarded in converfation; or, if they were, that fuch converfation must have been in recitative we afk whether thofe, who hold that opinion, are prepared to fay, that a Greek orator, ufing the word unrgoxroves, would have had no means of expreffing whether a man had killed his mother, or been flain by her, without having recourse to musical notes; and, confequently, that fuch of his audience as were not gifted with good musical ears, might have doubted which was the cafe. Margoxtoros, flain by his mother, and unrgoxróvos, a matricide, differ only in their accents. Thefe words the English reader pronounces alike, meetroctonos; giving the 2d and 4th fyllables the found used in mofs, and preferving nearly the true fhort o in the 3d. We requeft our readers to fpeak the word with the short o, as above explained, in all the three laft fyllables; and, not fuffering the longo, or fhort aw to intrude themselves, to throw the accent in one cafe on the fecond, in the other on the 3d fyllable,

and

and they will find, that without at all approaching the long found, (which must be expreffed by meetroke-tone-ofe) they may throw an accent as emphatic as the energy of the caufe might require, upon either; and that it would be diftinguishable without the leaft ambiguity, as far as the voice could reach. The fame is the cafe with the English word revenue, which fome accent on the first, and others on the fecond; but none, except a few of our countrymen, pronounce it as if the accented fyllable had a long e, which would be expreffed, according to English orthography, by rai venue or revainue. Let it not be faid that the v or n, are doubled; an error not unlikely to arife from our faulty orthography. When a letter is reduplicated, we very rarely pronounce both, which we are convinced the Greeks and Romans did; for they could not have deemed them longer than a mute and liquid, if they had not distinctly founded both confonants, as the French do in fome futures like je courrais, and the English in fome compound words, like overrun; or where a mute e intervenes, as in fupineness, folely, &c. For this reafon, no Greek or Latin words end with a reduplication. With us, a reduplicated confonant is generally a fign that the preceding vowel is fhort, and bears the acute, and only one is articulated.

Triflino's Italia Liberata was printed in 1547 & 48, with Greek vowels, in Italy: this edition may be of great ufe in explaining the Greek pronunciation, and the difference between accent and quantity, which have been strangely confounded. The Italians have a diftinct long and short o; the firft pronounced like ours, the fecond as we have above stated. In their verbs, the first perfon of the prefent tenfe ends with the long o unaccented, and the third of the paft with the fhort accented: therefore we find very properly the prefent of tornere printed tarna, and the paft tornò; at the fame time honor accented on the laft is printed hwner, and voftro accented on the first is voftra. We pronounce the Latin vos, as if written with; but the found in the first fyllable of voftro is very different from that, and from the fhort aw which Englishmen exprefs in vofter. No good fpeaker of Italian will give the fame found to the accented fyllables of tornò and onor; like the former is the Greek gos, and very different from more or mordfs. The acute accent certainly does not induce length of time; the more rapidly an Englishman pronounces the contraction I don' know, the more ftrongly does he accent the middle fyllable; and in the fame manner thould the Greek curró be articulated. Dr Fofter was not able to diveft himfelf fufficiently of habitual prejudices to confider this juftly; for inftance, he faid (p. 31.) that in fpeaking honestly, the voice dwelt longer on the first than the fecond fyllable; an affertion, when applied to English pronunciation, directly contrary to fact, and which has

arifen from the ftrange confufion that has been made between accent and quantity. In the firft of that word, we find the aw, as it is used in hock; but the most acute accent, that can be thrown upon it, will not make it approach the more to the long found in hawk, which is produced by the fame motion of the organs of fpeech with a longer breathing. The theory of Sheridan was fo unintelligible, that it fcarcely requires notice. He felt the truth, but old prejudices prevented his fully comprehending it; and therefore, when he found fhort fyllables accented, he faid that, in such cafes, the accent was on the confonant; forgetting, that co-existence with fome vowel, and conformity to its tone, are the principal claufes in the charter, by which confonants hold their place in articulated fpeech. It has been however difputed, whether, in the English language, the accented fyllables are pronounced higher, or only louder, than the others. We are perfuaded that, according to the beft English articula tion, they are spoken in a higher tone; but we are willing to admit (as Mr Mitford does) that it is poffible to fpeak one fyllable louder than the reft without fpeaking it higher: and perhaps in fome provinces that habit may prevail; but we agree with him, that it would produce an effect very inferior to the melody of good English fpeech. This, however, we must obferve, that whether fpoken higher or louder, a fhort fyllable will still be a fhort fyllable; for length of time has nothing to do with high or low, loud or low. We are not furprised that our learned countryman, Lord Kaimes, fhould have held that every accented fyllable in English was long; for it is the peculiarity of our Scotish dialect rarely to ufe the acute, but generally to prolong the fyllable which the English accent; as it is perhaps the peculiarity of the Irish to speak it in a higher tone than Englishmen. Hence arifes much confufion in the difcuffion of this fubject. We readily admit, that the tone which our countrymen generally give to the accented fyllable, is incompatible with brevity; it is the proper tone that should be given to the Greek circumflexed vowel; and the circumflex cannot be placed on a short one; and perhaps that heavy circumflex, which invariably adheres to our lowland articulation, may be more unpleafing to a foreigner, than the lighter monotony of the French; but we hold, that fpeaking the accented fyllable higher, as the Irish do, or merely with greater emphafis, as fome think the English do, is very different from prolonging it.

Mr Mitford, who appears to be unacquainted with German, had learned from a fentence in Cefarotti, that an extraordinary hexameter-mania had lately pervaded Germany; and he merely repeats the fact. It is, however, intimately connected

with this fubject, and requires fome confideration. Klopstock, whofe reputation is perhaps undefervedly great, has prefixed to his Meffiah a treatise upon that difgufting abortion, which is -called the German hexameter. A few extracts, which we tranflate from the German, will be fufficient to explain the nature of his system.

The rule of our hexameter is to use the dactyle oftener than the trochee, and that oftener than the fpondee. We dare not use the dactyle fo often as the Greeks, because the trochee is not fo flow as the fpondee; and that (as the third foot in this fpecies of poetry) does not occur frequently enough to counterbalance the numerous dactyles. It muft be allowed, that our epic verfe has greater variety than the Homeric hexameters. I call them by that name, because Homer's are more beautiful than those of any other poet, Greek, or Roman: but I muft apologize for apparent partiality in preferring the rythm of our hexameters.' I prefer it for two reafons; ft, Because the dactyle and trochee are very fimilar, and the fpondee has no nearer affinity to the dactyle than any other foot, except the moloffus!!!!' 2dlj, Because the rythm of our verse, being more various than that of Homer, has a beautiful metrical expreffion: and I truft that these two reafons will be fufficient to acquit me of partiality. But I will further prove my impartiality by confeffing, that one fuperiority in the Homeric verfe is, that the rapidity of the dactyle is better fupported in it by fpondees, than in our hexameter by trochees. Our poets can, however, leffen that fuperiority, by exerting themselves not to use the fpondee too feldom, which we can get by means of our monofyllables; and alfo to choose fuch trochees, as, according to Greek pronunciation, would be spondees. '

If the German poet has not proved his impartiality, he has at leaft expreffed very novel and curious notions of quantity: but, though all this be nonfenfe, as unmixed as ever flowed from the pen of man, it deferves fome notice, as having fallen from one of high authority on the Continent, who has had numberless imitators, and has in a manner deftroyed all fenfe of good poetry in Germany. Proceeding to explain himfelf further, he ftates that the Germans have words exactly fimilar to the Greek; as, werfen, Banner, huldigung, sears, heilighed, dudexa. This is inaccurate; for no Greek word ending with a long fyllable, like huldigung, can be accented on the antepenult; if he had taken Latin words indeed, and written fulminant and fulminis, he would have been right. We, as well as the Germans, have many words fpoken according to the Latin rules of accentuation, and, of fuch, a true hexameter verfe might certainly be composed; but if all were fo accented, the metre would not fuit our lan#guages, because the confonants are fo numerous, that our lines muft confift entirely of fpondees, inftead of either_trochees or dactyles, which he mentions, mistaking accent for quantity.

VOL. VI. NO. 12.

A a

But

But many of our words are accented in a very different manner; cruelty, nourishment, lebende, todesfreich, are not accented like bonéfla, and defcendunt: and, on that account, the fame combi nation of quantities would not produce the fame cadence or combination of accents; and confequently would form a different verse. For these reasons, it is evident, that no feries of verfes can be written in our languages exactly fimilar to Latin hexameters. But the fpecies of verse, (if verse it can be called), which, under the aufpices of Klopftock, has overrun Germany, and even invaded Denmark, bears little refemblance to them. The fcheme of the German writers is to place an accented fyllable where the Romans placed a long one, and an unaccented fyllable where they ufed a fhort one; as if accent and quantity were fimilar. In intremere, the fecond is fhort and accented, the first long and unaccented: in honefta, the reverfe is the cafe. But (reply the Germans) we difregard quantity, and our poetry is regulated by accent, as that of the Romans was by quantity. We are willing to admit, for the fake of argument, that quantity has been difregarded in the poetry of modern languages, and that in many inftances irregular orthography hath fo confufed it, that it is not eafily diftinguished. But how does it follow that accent is fimilar to quantity, or will produce the fame metrical effect? Had not the Romans accent as well as distinct quantities? Do we not know that their words were accented by an invariable rule, and do we not now adhere to that rule in reading Latin? namely, that if the penult be long, it shall be accented; if it be fhort, the antepenult fhall be accented, whether long or short. And is it not evident, that, under that invariable ław, certain combinations of quantity muft produce certain combinations of accent, very different from thofe which would be made by fixing the accents uniformly in the place of long fyllables? For example, we will take a favourite line, which Klopstock has quoted from the Meffiah, in his treatife. Though every fyllable except the last is long, it is intended for a dactylic hexameter, an accent falling on the first of every three fyllables. The fame cadence has been ufed in Englifh and Spanish; and it is, in fact, a verfe of the triple accentual cadence, improperly protracted to the length of 17 fyllables without a paufe. We have no hefittion in afferting, that (waving all confideration of quantity) a verfe fo accented could not be admitted in Latin heroic poetry, and we doubt whether it could in Greek. We should look in vain through Virgil for a verfe which could answer to it; and Roma mania terruit impiger Hannibal armis, attributed to Ennius, is too exceptionable in other refpects to ferve our purpose: bet